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Ordinarily, the NFL's Coach of the Year honor adheres to a simple pattern. It often acts as a type of mea culpa. Sorry we got wrong your squad in our preseason projections.

In theory, it's a direct line: the skipper who oversaw the largest resurgence wins the award. However, it creates an annual discussion about expectations and whether we're genuinely rewarding excellent coaching or simply the biggest shock.

Yet this year's field is fundamentally different. The pool of candidates is unusually strong. It has been the season of comebacks. The NFL has been unpredictable, with reigning division champions falling away and recent also-rans improving collectively. During an normal year, Sean Payton leading the Denver Broncos to the top of the AFC would make him the overwhelming favorite. Yet in this wild and thrilling season, he's facing five other elite coaches.

Below is how the projected vote ought to be structured.

5) The Chicago Bears Coach, His Team, 11-5

Voters for Coach of the Year selectors adore quarterbacks. History shows this. Sean McVay in 2017. Another in 2020. A third in 2022. Should you fix a quarterback, you're well on your way home.

The Bears' head coach not only corrected Caleb Williams; he's unleashed him. In the right system, Williams has been given the chance to demonstrate his otherworldly talent. From midseason onward, the Bears sit at fourth in offensive EPA per play. This isn't a hot streak – it's prolonged excellence. With his guidance, the quarterback has become more confident, far less reckless, and has eagerly surrendered to the scheme instead of going rogue. It is an offense designed entirely in Johnson's vision: a physical run game, a steady helping of play-action passes and a imaginative passing attack that creates wide receiver targets all over the field. Williams has capitalized. And when openings weren't there, he's been able to create big plays out of nothing.

Johnson arrived to Chicago with a specific offensive blueprint. Almost every bet – rebuilding the offensive line, highlighting the tight ends, transforming the QB into a timing-based thrower – has worked. This is uncommon for a first-year head coach. And it's rarer still for a leader who walked into the building with the kind of expectations he did. For consecutive straight cycles, he was the hottest candidate on the coaching carousel. However when it comes to selecting a leader, there are no guarantees. Remarkably, Johnson has lived up to the hype – and even surpassed them. He's proven not only to be a scheme dork but the type of culture builder that can breathe new life into an organization.

In a normal year, Johnson would be the overwhelming favorite. Yet the current isn't a typical campaign!

Where Johnson's case comes a bit into trouble is on the defensive side. The Chicago defense currently rank in the bottom third in defensive success rate. They are surviving on takeaways, and takeaways are notoriously fickle. Defensive minds can focus on ball disruption, but no one can guarantee it. Johnson is on the list because the offensive production is legitimate. He's not higher because variance is doing an outsized share of the defensive heavy lifting. With a couple bounces of the ball, the Bears would be two victories behind. It's been an exceptional transformation, and the core is established for sustained success. However Johnson comes up short in this ranking.

4) The Jacksonville Jaguars Coach, Jacksonville Jaguars, Their Record

The Jaguars' coach is in a similar spot to Johnson. He's another first-time head coach who has orchestrated a dramatic resurgence. Over the crucial final weeks of the season, he has his franchise quarterback playing the best all-around football of his career. And he's also overseen the remaking of a defense that now ranks fifth in the NFL in EPA per play.

Even more notably, he has mastered the intangibles stuff, which was not a certainty following his early press conference introduction and some of his offseason moves.

The coach took over the Jaguars with an uncommonly inexperienced staff. In contrast to Johnson, who surrounded themselves with the perfect coaching mix of youth and veteran savvy, he bet on newbies. From the head coach himself to coordinators to assistant coaches, the Jags are filled with first-timers. That kind of setup is exciting on paper, but often fails in practice – as past failures are a warning – because everyone is learning a their job in real-time. But Coen has managed to bring the entire group and everything into sync.

After an early strong start, there was a chance that the season would go off the rails. A mid-year setback caused the Jags stumbling again. That's typically when coaches panic and change too much. He did not. Instead, he simplified things. Jacksonville stopped chasing explosive plays and started seeking reliable ones. Coen refocused the offense around key players and the running game, and asked his QB to use his legs more.

The results are obvious. The Jags have won seven games consecutively and will be the AFC's number three seed. He gets the tiniest deduction in the rankings because he inherited a skilled roster, but he has proven he can get the most out of that talent.

3) Mike Macdonald, His Team, Their Record

Each Coach of the Year case has a pivotal decision. For the Seahawks coach, it was his quarterback move.

Moving on from a incumbent, signing a new quarterback and pairing him with an new offensive coordinator could have ended the campaign in the early weeks. Rather, it defined it. Through the middle point of the season, the new QB was an Most Valuable Player contender. He has regressed since that time, dropping to 23rd in efficiency per dropback over the second half of the season, putting him just one place ahead of other QBs.

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